"Stop Faking and Follow the Fakir Way": Baul-Fakirs and Authenticity

This paper analyzes the topic of "authenticity" in Bāul-Fakiri musical contexts, specifically on how the authentic fakir (phakir) or sadhu (sādhu) is constructed in both emic and etic discourses. Special attention is given to how the level of practical expertise in the yoga of breath-work (damer kāj) and other related practices contributes to the perceived authenticity of fakirs or sadhus in these discourses. Outside of sadhu communities and among the general public, authenticity is often judged by a rubric of success in Haṭhayoga, or the physical "yoga of force," which includes proficiency in difficult āsanas, or by external markings and apparel. Within sadhu communities, however, there are other ways of determining authenticity. The goal of this paper is to distinguish between these two modes of distinguishing between "fake" and "real." 

                  To give some background, Bāul (Bengali: bāul) and Fakir (phakir) refer to an early modern tantric and contemporary global esoteric movement that has its origins in an interconnected society of male, female, and androgynous sadhus (“renunciates”) in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. Bāul likely derives either from vātul or vāyu, “wind,” a reference to the importance of the air and wind in Baul practice, or from bājul or bājil ("follower of the thunderbolt [vajra]"). Fakir means "poor" in Persian and Arabic but in this context is synonymous with Bāul. Bāul-Fakir songs celebrate the physical body as a divine vehicle of realization and are full of wordplays and hidden puns that use a language full of hints and gestures. The most famous Bāul-Fakir was Lalon Fakir (Lālan Phakir, d. 1890), although there are many other singers and mystics both before and after him who have greatly contributed to this tradition, such as Bhaba Pagla and Panja Shah. The history of the Bāul-Fakirs of Bengal includes centuries of religious innovation in which Sufi mediators gradually integrated Islamic ideas with Hindu (Vaiṣṇava, Śaiva, and Śākta) and Buddhist Tantric cosmologies to create a heterodox folk tradition highly unique to Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. Individuals who practice this tradition of bhakti or devotional yoga are called Bāul-Fakirs and can be from any religious background or jāt (caste, birth-religion). The Bāul-Fakirs of Bangladesh are distinguished by their greater reverence for the songs of Lalon Fakir, whose continued significance in the region cannot be underrated.  Indeed, it is likely that no folk poet has made a more substantial contribution to modern Bengali literature, and two feature films have been made about his life and songs. In West Bengal, however, the tradition appears to be more decentralized, and the songs of other Bāul-Fakir poets such as Bhaba Pagla (Bhabā Pāglā) and Raj Krishna (Rāj Kṛṣṇa) are at least as prevalent as those of Lalon. The songs of other poets such as Panja Shah (Pāñja Shah), Duddu Shah (one of Lalon’s pupils), and self-composed songs are performed in Bangladesh as well, although Lalon’s songs are usually given preeminence at most festivals given his cultural status. While songs are the primary vehicle of teachings and ideas, Bāul-Fakirs sometimes possess handwritten notebooks that contain initiatory formulae, and some were known to compose independent works and instructional materials. These written sources preserve an early modern and contemporary manuscript record of various theories and practices in a vernacular Indic language that are also of direct relevance to Yoga and Tantra.

                  The paper begins by setting the stage of the world of sadhus, including the place of Bāul-Fakirs within it. Special attention is given to the way in which the two Partitions of Bengal in 1905 and 1947 also affected sadhu communities, especially by making Indian models of the sadhu normative (rather than East Pakistani and later Bangladeshi ones). It then shifts to discussion of how what the author calls Bengali "Musical Language Worlds" facilitated the emergence of another kind of Bāul-Fakiri sadhu with their own unique kind of yoga expressed through the medium of sound and music. The paper then shifts to consider an emic claim of authenticity as expressed musically by Lalon Fakir, the first line of which is "Stop Faking and Follow the Fakir Way" (phereb cheṛe karo phakiri, trans. in Salomon, Cantú, and Zakaria 2017). The final part of the paper contrasts these emic indicators of authenticity with etic authenticators often imposed from outside, whether by South Asian or global observers.